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Official Toko view of Birkie
Hi gang,
Included below is Ian Harvey's official view of the Birkie. Has some interesting ideas in it as always. Enjoy. Rob B. The American Birkebeiner, the largest cross country ski race in America was held last weekend in Hayward, WI. There were over 6000 starters from all over the world, although most participants were from the Midwest. The Birkie actually involves two races - a 51 km marathon or a 25 km half marathon. The forecast that was given over a week in advance by the National Weather Service held up really well. Lows Friday night were about 17 and highs on race day turned out to be in the mid 30s. Snow stayed pretty dry due to the 10-15 mile per hour wind. It had snowed Thursday and Friday and the snow was predictably soft. There was also a dusting of snow on race morning. On Monday the 16th of February (the race was on the 21st) we recommended LF Moly, HF Blue/Red mix (for elite and first wave) or HF Red followed by HelX Cold. We also recommended fine structure. Thankfully, this recommendation turned out to be spot on. I have learned to wax "cold" at the Birkie with finer structure than one would think. This is for a number of reasons. First, the race is long and the wax needs to be durable. A harder wax is more durable. Second, there is a ton of climbing in this race. This means that a skier spends a lot of time going relatively slowly up big long hills. A harder wax breaks away easier than a softer wax making them slippery at slow speeds. Also, there is generally some wind at the Birkie which drys the snow out and makes it act "colder". Lastly, if it is not corn snow, the Birkie trail is generally soft yielding slower ski speeds. For these same reasons a finer structure seems to work better at the Birkie when the snow is not transformed. For most of these same reasons a soft ski (which in my opinion always climbs better too) is generally the call for the Birkie when it is not transformed snow. In this year's Birkie, I think that a coarse structure or stiff skis was a recipe for certain slow skis. We gave this advice verbally at all of the venues (the 3 retail stores and at the Expo). Our tip of HelX Cold as a final layer was also solid. The Blue/Red mix for elites and first wavers gave the skis an excellent "feel" and made them faster at slow speeds. (You know what I mean). The HelX Cold tested about the same as JetStream Old Snow, but had it gotten a bit wetter would have kicked in and given some super fast skis on the downhills. As it was though HelX Cold ran very well. Before the race, especially on Friday, there was a lot of trepidation (as always) and people coming back AGAIN asking, "are you sure?". Everybody seemed to want to panic and "warm up" the recommendation. As commonly is the case though, the weather can change but the conditions might stay the same. This was the case here this year, last year, and three years ago. Luckily, we work with Toko and our waxes have beautiful broad ranges and these changes were welcomed. After considering what might happen, we knew that our tip was going to be excellent almost no matter what change took place (except for rain or extreme cold). The Toko Tech Team and Team Rossignol (and some others) represented us very well in the shops, at the expo, during the event, and in general. Thank you to all involved for an excellent weekend. Ian Harvey Toko Brand Manager Climb High Inc. 866 TOKO USA ===== Rob Bradlee Java, C++, Perl, XML, OOAD, Linux, and Unix Training |
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